


to have, to hold on

by cohobbitation



Series: now you have to live with it [1]
Category: Watchmen
Genre: M/M, rorschach has a legal marriage kink the size of new york state don’t even play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 13:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18095516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cohobbitation/pseuds/cohobbitation
Summary: Perhaps it doesn’t matter if anybody else recognizes them. Perhaps they only have to come out and say it:you’re the best thing I have, and will ever have in my life, and I want to keep you.Perhaps they still have to get up in the morning, and they are still bruised and scarred and at war with a world that increasingly doesn’t want saving.But they do: they get up, they want to do the saving, and they want to be saved in turn. And they’ll do the work. The words just help.





	to have, to hold on

“My first, my last, my only.”

“My always,” Daniel says, and means it.

They kneel in the alley, in Archie’s access tunnel, and say the right words. They have no rabbi and no witness. No priest. It doesn’t matter. If there is a god, then whatever form He takes, God is watching. If there is not, then hell only knows there’s only the two of them to keep the peace.

They go in full costume, because that is all they have. (Over the next six months of honeymoon, Dan’s wedding suit will appear for him piece by piece in his closet: all immaculate and snowy white and perfectly fitted, save for the blue garter that appears first, pinned with a note that reads _FOR TRUTH — .][._ ) 

They kneel before the cockroaches and the silence, and gift each other with their traditions: Rorschach sings, a few prayers from the boys’ choir he was expelled from when his voice broke, and Daniel produces the exquisitely wrought ketubah. He signs with that name alone: no _Nite Owl_ , no Dreiberg. Rorschach signs with two brackets and their matched periods, and shaking hands.

They rise up and consider it done. They put hand in hand and ascend the stairs, and only make it to the kitchen before they fall upon each other, tender and desperate and ravenous.

_speak now, my love._

The world holds its peace.

The doomsday clock stands at two strokes to midnight. Cinderella steps out of her shoes, and waits to be seen in her own skin.

At a stroke past, the prince reaches out and caresses a haggard face.

“Who dared,” Daniel whispers, almost sobbing, “who _dared_ ever tell you you were not beautiful?”

He has both palms braced on Rorschach’s jaw, his burning thumbs sweeping across the upper boundary of unruly stubble. He clings like he’s afraid Rorschach will fall to ash in front of him, a beast-prince woken from his slumber by a drop of treacherous wax.

Rorschach cannot answer, so he takes his fingers into his mouth instead.

“Hey, buddy,” Daniel keens, tracing his tongue. And he keens again. It’s a dreadful sound. “Oh baby. Oh baby. You clueless, callous, _pretty_ boy.”

Rorschach only nods. So far, Daniel has only ever been right.

They go down together, and recite a few hymns from the Song of Solomon. That much is common ground: strange metaphors, and yearning.

The year is 1974. The sun comes up, and so do they.

In a little less than a year, they are blessed with a daughter.

**Author's Note:**

> I am neither Jewish nor Catholic and have had no extensive personal contact with either religion. I am muddling through on Wikipedia and good faith. Please be merciful.


End file.
